Ryzen 5 build... How do you decide what mobo BRAND?

euskalzabe

euskalzabe

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I've been reading online to decide on an AM4 motherboard, but advice out there is laughably contradictory.

If you don't OC and all you need is to connect your CPU, a mid-range GPU (RX 480 in my case) and a couple sticks of DDR4 (just bought 8GB or Patriot Viper Elite 3200mhz sticks on discount), there's a few $80 boards:

Gigabyte AB350M Gaming 3
Asus Prime B350M-A
MSI B350M Gaming Pro

How do YOU decide what to buy, considering all the contradictory advice online? I'm waiting on Ryzen 5 1400x, so I have time to think this through.

I'm wondering - for $80, how on Earth can any of these be in any way bad boards? They already offer more features than I need. Some say Asus is best, others MSI is, others that either of those is awful and Gigabyte is the 2nd best option... Other than waiting on other buyers to review on Amazon, there's zero way to make an informed choice on quality (and saying that Asus is best only to then realize people talk about their $150 boards does not help when one is considering $50-80 boards). I had a $55 ASRock H61M-VS that lasted 3 years before dying on a stormy night (learned to used surge protectors). Replaced it with a $51 Asus M5A78L-M PLUS that I'm still running 3 years later, so in my book $50 boards are already great value for what I do - no OC, no crazy setups. Just CPU, GPU, 2SSDs and 1HDD.

I might just get fed up in the process and buy an i5 7400 with a B250 board, but I'd really like to support AMD. Intel needs neither the money nor the excuses to keep innovating at turtle-speed.
 
It is exactly the same as Ford, Chevy, Chrysler. Each have made good models and each have made lemons. Read reviews and roll the dice if you have no experience with the brands.

If you can't wait for reviews then pick the prettiest one and then write up a mini review and post it here so others can get an idea of how the board performs etc.
 
Thanks. I'll probably go with the Asus Prime B350M-A when Ryzen 5 is released, I just dislike that the main advice online is so contradictory that one is left where he/she began: try luck. That means I shouldn't buy Asrock anymore, and keep buying Asus, which is problematic logic because then I'll never try other brands, and brand quality changes over time.

Anyway, I was just curious to see how most people make a decision. It seems to be either brand loyalty of experience determinism, neither of which are good predictors of a future product's quality. Either way, a disappointing state of affairs for the market, but it is what it is.
 
I'm currently enjoying the Gigabyte AB350 Gaming 3 (the full ATX flavor)

UEFI has issues but so do the other AM4 boards.

Only real gripe is I cant find anywhere to disable the integrated NIC

I've had great results with Gigabyte boards for my recent builds (3 personal systems plus a few for friends and family).
 
By history. For instance, I don't do Gigabyte + AMD, due to a horrendous history going back to the NF3 day and continuing on into the 990FX board I have on my workstation now (was too good a deal to pass up at the time). From there it then goes into features/price/looks/availability.
 
I'm partial to MSI, but I've never owned any of their entry level or gaming stuff. Mainly I go for features, connectivity, and looks for the stuff I want to use. I.E: I'll more than likely never use a U.2 drive, and I own no Thunderbolt devices, so those being omitted in favor of a better power section, or USB connectivity (header and back panel) is good for me.
 
To be perfectly honest, it doesn't matter much on the Intel side. On the AMD side, it remains to be seen. In the past, MSI used to build great AMD boards and shit Intel boards. It all depends on the design teams that work on them and what components are chosen. Combine that with some BIOS coding and you either get a good motherboard or a horrendous piece of shit. I've got zero experience with the AMD motherboards right now so I can't say much about them one way or another.
 
Dan_D said:
To be perfectly honest, it doesn't matter much on the Intel side. On the AMD side, it remains to be seen. In the past, MSI used to build great AMD boards and shit Intel boards. It all depends on the design teams that work on them and what components are chosen. Combine that with some BIOS coding and you either get a good motherboard or a horrendous piece of shit. I've got zero experience with the AMD motherboards right now so I can't say much about them one way or another.
Click to expand...

combine with the rumor of lack of AMD support on BIOS builds, rush job to the market, little confidence in stock, I doubt we will see a product comparable to the Z270 for a while.
 
Trimlock said:
combine with the rumor of lack of AMD support on BIOS builds, rush job to the market, little confidence in stock, I doubt we will see a product comparable to the Z270 for a while.
Click to expand...

It's not a rumor. BIOS issues abound, there is very little in the way of available motherboards and these were certainly rushed out the door.
 
Dan_D said:
It's not a rumor. BIOS issues abound, there is very little in the way of available motherboards and these were certainly rushed out the door.
Click to expand...

Yea, you could see it with just the pre-orders. I find it quite humorous that AMD wanted these to be available for pre-order when they were shipped via boat freight to the builders. Really starting to question my desire to build a RyZen build seeing how much of a cluster fuck this all has been.

The rumor I was hinting at was mostly with how AMD sent very little samples and offered no support with BIOS, even when directly requested. There is still little reason to believe they have opened up to their board makers. After all of this, all we get is some vague, political response from AMD. I don't know if that's a telling sign the supply issue will continue to be shitty or if AMD is unwilling to acknowledge they botched their boards or both?
 
Ultimately, the motherboards are built by their brands. There is guidance from the CPU manufacturer and AMD is known for providing very little compared to Intel. The BIOS and its underlying code is largely for the CPU and there is a certain amount of that which comes from the CPU manufacturer. That's hugely important and AMD fucked up by making this available in its final form very late in the process. I don't know the precise details but the rumor is that AMD had delivered the final code three weeks prior to launch leaving manufacturers a week or so to get that done prior to shipment. Based on what I've seen this time around I can believe those time tables are pretty close to the mark. I had a conversation with one motherboard manufacturer about AM4 motherboards shortly before Z270 launched and I got the distinct impression things weren't very far along on that front. More than that would be speculative on my part but I believe the development time for these motherboards was much shorter than it usually is.

All I do know for sure is that if things were remotely close to being done right, I'd have had a Ryzen motherboard on hand and reviewed by launch day for you guys to read. I'm just now getting started on that.
 
Pretty excited you finally got a board for review. I'd hope to of actually purchased a board by now but now I'm leaning back to x99 or wait till the end of the year for E and X series.

I didn't want to do that because I'm ready now for a purchase...
 
I love asus boards due to the aura rgb controller but it looks like its poopin the bed on that front. Very disappointing. The next go to would be gigabyte for me due to features and great reviews on the board overall (intel side). I would presume that more boards are coming at CES for ryzen 5/3 and gen2 ryzen. I am going to wait until next year for ryzen at this point even though I am so hyped since I want to see if they fix all the bugs first.

TLDR; Asus but not this batch, Gigabyte seems best right now from what I have seen in reviews
 
There will still be some time before everything gets fully optimal on such a brand new platform. With R5 already on the horyzen, I actually don't think everything will be perfect by the time of its arrival. But I will guarantee that inventory stock will be in full force as our shipment by sea will be arriving very soon. I will be sure to announce inventory restock on our social media networks.
 
Myself, I have always had fine luck with ASUS and Gigabyte boards, that said, I don't often look at brand, I look at reviews and features I need. As already said, everyone has made a shit board at some point etc, they might have a whole line up of shit boards, but have one that's just amazing, and that's all that matters. With Intel at least, I have noticed very little gain in OC headroom from low-mid to highend, only changes being highend has nicer/more features in BIOS, but actual performance seems to be pretty much the same, so if you don't need the extra feature sets, many times the $120-150 mobo does just as good as the $400 mobo.

Many might not agree with this, but I see highend boards today more about features, while in the past I saw it as paying for higher OC ability/stability, in my own (limited) experience, that seems to be the direction it has gone, will have to see if that holds up for AMD this time around.
 
Due to memory compatibility with the DDR 4 sticks I had already bought, I ended up getting an i5 7500 + Asus B250M-A instead of my expected Ryzen setup.

So far, impressions:

- Everything running smoothly, although for some unexplicable reason the RX 480 was very annoying to get working properly. This was a non issue in my previous FX 6300 build, but the second I installed Crimson Relive 17.x, everything went out the window: erratic performance, hard freezes... I only figured out it was the GPU drivers after some trial and error. Installing Crimson Relive 16.12 fixed the issue, though it bugs me I'm in December drivers. I'll wait until MS releases the creators update, and then try updating to the next version of Radeon drivers, see how that goes. I'm not sure if this is AMD's fault or Intel/Asus' fault, because my previous Asus AM3+ board gave me zero problems. Bottom line - somebody's to blame here, I'm not sure who.

- My system is now barely audible. When stressed, the FX 6300 cooler sounded like a turbine. I'm not sure if the 7500's cooler is simply better or the fact that it's a 65W CPU is the main reason (less heat), but it's a joy to play any game and not have any noise.

- Performance - fine, but I'm far from impressed. Desktop use sees little to no difference. I don't transcode or OC, so I see zero benefit there. Gaming is the only thing where my framerate is clearly higher and more stable in the lows. Other than that, this confirms what I thought initially: Intel hasn't done much with CPUs and this is a bad time to give Intel money - I really didn't want to encourage their laziness, but it is what it is. Hoping Zen 3 keeps evolving well and that's what I'll buy in a couple years.

- XMP is quite easy to enable. The board only supports 2400mhz OC instead of the 3200 of my memory, but I wasn't going to spend double the money on a Z270 board when I don't need most of its features, just for the XMP OC. So far, this memory is working fine as it is.
 
euskalzabe said:
Due to memory compatibility with the DDR 4 sticks I had already bought, I ended up getting an i5 7500 + Asus B250M-A instead of my expected Ryzen setup.

So far, impressions:

- Everything running smoothly, although for some unexplicable reason the RX 480 was very annoying to get working properly. This was a non issue in my previous FX 6300 build, but the second I installed Crimson Relive 17.x, everything went out the window: erratic performance, hard freezes... I only figured out it was the GPU drivers after some trial and error. Installing Crimson Relive 16.12 fixed the issue, though it bugs me I'm in December drivers. I'll wait until MS releases the creators update, and then try updating to the next version of Radeon drivers, see how that goes. I'm not sure if this is AMD's fault or Intel/Asus' fault, because my previous Asus AM3+ board gave me zero problems. Bottom line - somebody's to blame here, I'm not sure who.

- My system is now barely audible. When stressed, the FX 6300 cooler sounded like a turbine. I'm not sure if the 7500's cooler is simply better or the fact that it's a 65W CPU is the main reason (less heat), but it's a joy to play any game and not have any noise.

- Performance - fine, but I'm far from impressed. Desktop use sees little to no difference. I don't transcode or OC, so I see zero benefit there. Gaming is the only thing where my framerate is clearly higher and more stable in the lows. Other than that, this confirms what I thought initially: Intel hasn't done much with CPUs and this is a bad time to give Intel money - I really didn't want to encourage their laziness, but it is what it is. Hoping Zen 3 keeps evolving well and that's what I'll buy in a couple years.

- XMP is quite easy to enable. The board only supports 2400mhz OC instead of the 3200 of my memory, but I wasn't going to spend double the money on a Z270 board when I don't need most of its features, just for the XMP OC. So far, this memory is working fine as it is.
Click to expand...

I have a reference XFX RX480 and did not have the driver issue. I have the Gigabyte AB350 Gaming 3 and did a clean install of Windows 10

What difference would you expect to see on the desktop? I've found browsing to a bit less painful on script heavy pages but at the end of the day the web is getting destroyed by incompetent javascript programmers hell bent to ruin it for everyone.
 
If you're waiting for Ryzen 5, then wait for newer boards and do not buy something that was available at launch. There are clearly issues with every available board that will hopefully be fixed by the time Ryzen 5 hits the market, but I wouldn't bet on it. Maybe newer models will ship with fewer quirks?

That said I am happy with my MSI B350 Tomahawk, aside from two pains in the ass: long load times (it takes 20-30 seconds to start launching W10), and inability to run my 4x8GB kit of DDR4 at speeds > 2400MHz. These two specific problems seem to be afflicting all of the AM4 boards.
 
seems at this point in time the question is not "what brand" but rather, can you get one; any brand
 
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